


Shadows

by the_diversionist



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-24 02:30:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4902121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_diversionist/pseuds/the_diversionist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trevelyan turns to the spymaster for guidance, unaware of how her appearance stirs the shadows of Leliana's past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadows

Leliana finds Trevelyan in the rookery.

She’s curled in one of the windows, arms wound around a tome, legs drawn to her chest. She wears something between leather trousers and a skirt. Pale, dark haired and amber eyed, Leliana can’t help but to think of _her_. Is she another of Flemeth’s daughters; one that escaped the Wilds and was taken in by some family desperate for a girl child? What if she is a husk primed for the taking? Better Flemeth than Corypheus? Better to kill her now, Leliana wonders? Sometimes she slips into these little stories.

The Inquisitor has a castle but she spends her time here, where it is cold and isolated. Snow flurries blow in, carrying the squawks of ravens and crows with it.

Leliana watches the Inquisitor, absorbed in her book. Vera couldn’t have heard her. Maybe she only senses her. Vera lifts her head, finds her in the shadows and smiles. In that way they differ. Leliana doesn’t recall the last time she trusted a smile. She takes the last step up, coming into the candlelight before slipping into the darkness again. She nods and makes her way to the worktable. There are reports from her agents to read, orders to execute.

Why does that girl study up here?

Leliana sits. There are agents she hasn’t heard from in weeks. They’re likely dead. A loss of life. A loss of information. There’s a twinge where grieving once was. It has become unrecognizable. It leaves her, as it has for the last few years. It is no longer something worth acknowledging or being grateful for. The Inquisitor sets her book on the table and sits across from her. Leliana looks from the cracked wax seal, like dried blood on the letter, to Vera’s face, smooth and inscrutable. Her lips are the color of plums.

“Inquisitor. Is there something that needs my attention?” Perhaps it is Josephine that demands Vera’s attention. Are her accommodations not up to standard? Why spend her time in this place?

The Inquisitor returns a small smile to the question, unknown, Leliana thinks, to the Inquisitor herself. “Can you afford another thing on your plate?” Leliana doesn’t react. Was that a slight? Their eyes drift to the silver capsule on the table with the names of those lost in Haven. Vera shuts the tome, at last abandoning her pretense. “I was thinking of our previous conversation.”

Ah, yes. Leliana expressed doubt at pulling her agents back when others disappeared. The Inquisitor insisted it was the right thing to do. But was it? What’s a handful of lives to those that could have been saved in Haven? _We’re better than Corypheus._ The words ended the conversation, with the Inquisitor becoming flustered and Leliana not having an immediate rebuttal on hand. Vera’s been thinking of their conversation. Leliana has dwelled more than she’d like. “What of it?”

“I thought I might have come across as…”

“You needn’t worry about walking on eggshells around me, Inquisitor. I can handle criticism.”

Vera contemplates. Her eyes are like candlelight. They flicker back to her. “Did it sound like I was criticizing you?” Wasn’t she? Vera goes still, gathering her thoughts. “I’ve been thinking about our conversation.” She narrows her eyes, recognizing she’s already said so. “And I think you may have been right.”

“You’re angry.”

“No.” She touches the tome. “I shouldn’t have criticized you.”

“So you were criticizing me.” Vera looks up. Leliana wants to tell her she’s teasing but doesn’t, focusing on the flush crawling up her cheeks instead.

“No. I’m sorry. I’m here because… I don’t know what the right thing is anymore.”

Circle mages are sheltered. Butchered, sometimes, by their protectors. Vera is a noble. Likely she had a better experience than the others locked up with her. Leliana hasn’t forgotten the Circle tower in Ferelden and the atrocities suffered there when Knight-Commander Greagoir nearly annulled the Circle. She hasn’t forgotten Cullen. What a different man he was then. Can she judge him? His fear? His hatred? No. “And you’ve come to me?” Vera knows she was the Left Hand of the Divine. She’s the Spymaster of the Inquisition. It takes a certain character or lack, some would argue, to fill those positions.

“Why not come to you?” That face, saying those things. “I’ve spent my life in a Circle tower. I don’t know how to live in Thedas. I don’t know how to lead an Inquisition. The people we have lost—that’s on me, not you.” Her chin quivers before she gets it under control.

“I disagree.” How does a girl who’s been sheltered the entirety of her life bear death? How when the foundation is strong enough to withstand that weight? It doesn’t flutter from her shoulders like it does Leliana’s.

“I need help. I need someone to steer me in the right direction. You helped stop a Blight. You were the Left Hand of the Divine. If _anyone_ can give me guidance—”

Leliana stands. “No.”

“No?”

“If you need counsel, go to Cassandra.”

“I’m coming to you. Don’t pretend I’m something more than a figurehead with an anchor attached to my hand. Don’t pretend that having an inexperienced nobody isn’t what any of you wanted. I’m a noble with magic running through my veins. Nothing more.”

“You’re being modest. You have considerable talent.” Cassandra has reported that Vera is one of the most powerful and talented apostates she’s seen. “Particularly for such a young Circle mage.”

“I’m not so young.” She’s more than ten years her junior. Leliana looks back at her. Purple and blues blossom along her lips and chin, like ink dropped into water. Bruises from battle. “Whatever you may think, if I had to choose an advisor to get us through all of this, it’d be you.” Leliana crosses her arms gingerly, keeping the words, the girl, at bay. “You’ve saved my life once that I know of. I haven’t forgotten.”

“Oh. That reality.” The one where she gave her life for the Inquisitor. It seems to mean something to the girl. But that was another world. Another life. Does it matter if she would choose to end things similarly in this timeline? The Inquisitor is worth anything as long as those rifts tear the sky. “You must forget about that. All of us will lay our lives down for you. You are the only one who can stop this madness. Other spymasters can be found. There is only one you.”

“And only one Nightingale.” She rises to her feet. “Is it so odd that I admire you?” Vera casts the words to a raven in a cage, stretching a finger out for the bird to nip.

So, the girl admires her. Many have admired her. Few that ever actually knew her. “I’m not here to be admired. I have a job. I give everything to do it to the best of my ability.” A beat. “But history will judge how successful I am.” She smiles for the first time since their conversation. “Perhaps they will brand me a tyrant, and you the same, for allowing my actions.”

“When we’ve won I’ll make sure our historians paint a pretty picture. Unless you decide to return to your minstrel ways and sing the tales of our victory yourself.”

Leliana utters a soft, mirthless laugh. “Me? No. I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Bards must carry a certain light in their heart. It isn’t there for me anymore. I can’t remember the last time it was. You can’t have it and do this work.” She sighs, her breath fogging in the air. She enjoyed those days. Sometimes she wonders if they were all pretend. If they were, does it matter? She was happy. She was something resembling happy.

“Would that light still be there if I had been the one to die instead of the Divine?”

Vera’s caution is evident. Leliana doesn’t blame her. Leliana was angry when they first spoke. Bitter. She still is. She hides it better now. She’d been emotional and rash. It was raw then. This girl, with that face, had lived while the Divine died. How unfair. How cruel. Something goes out of her, a wavering of the anger that has kept her rigid for so long. Her shoulders slump slightly. “No. What was lost was lost long ago.” Some of it left when Marjolaine plunged that knife into her. The rest faded when Leliana punched her own into Marjolaine years later. “You’re thinking of our conversation back in Haven. I said a lot of things. I was… heated. I’m sorry. All I can ask is that you put it out of your mind.”

“I can’t.”

Leliana nods absently, measuring the worth of disappointment. “I won’t pretend I don’t want her back. For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re here. But without her death... I don’t know that I would be the spymaster for the Inquisition.” She would have never left Justinia’s side. The advisors consider her to be severe but they know how many would die if not for her ability to do the difficult thing.

“But what you have to bear…”

“Is worth the cost.”

“I want you to take care of yourself.”

She scoffs. This girl pretends to care for her wellbeing. Her patrons always pretend in until they realize there are no easy solutions. “Do you have these chats with your other advisors?”

“My other advisors sleep. Not often,” she admits, “but more than you.” She cocks her head, opening the raven’s cage. It hops out onto her arm, it’s claws burying deep. Vera grimaces but turns her gaze to Leliana. “I see your candle burning late into the night. Sometimes into the morning.”

“Do you make it a habit to watch the rookery windows?” Her silence is answer enough. “Why?”

There’s a long beat. She brushes her fingers along the sleek feathers of the raven. “You know why.”

Yes. She supposes she does. She looks at the blood, startlingly red against her lily flesh. “You remind me of a woman I knew a long time ago. A witch. She ridiculed me often. My faith, my mannerisms, my optimism. At the time, I thought her jealous for not being touched as I was by the Maker’s light, and I felt sorry for her.” Leliana doesn’t miss Vera’s skepticism. “She was a traveling companion during the Blight. An apostate. I thought to myself, when this is all over, she’ll see how wrong she is and that it is through the will of the Maker that we exist, that we succeed. That it is through him that we are redeemed.”

“And now?”

“Now I wonder if she was right all along and I some naïve idiot desperate for something to believe in.” What does the Maker give that He doesn’t take away? How Morrigan rubbed it in her face when she killed Marjolaine, the glee she took in describing the look in her eyes when the life seeped out of her. “I haven’t seen her in a very long time. Sometimes I wonder what became of her. And then I see you. You’re barely older than she was when we met.”

“You don’t like this woman.”

Morrigan thought her a deranged zealot, a pampered noblewoman, frigid in bed, worrying more about her hair than any potential lover. She hadn’t liked her, no. At the time she pretended she did, that she was above such pettiness. She envied Morrigan’s freedom, her unexpected innocence, her ability to speak plainly. Leliana steps forward, chirping at the raven. It hops from Vera’s arm to Leliana’s shoulder. “Even if that were true, you are not she.” She takes Vera’s arm. There’s an instant of regret for the gloves she wears. Leliana imagines her skin is cold but maybe Vera would surprise her. Maybe, after a time, it would warm. Leliana does not miss the color on her cheeks, her lips. The Inquisitor is still as a hart, one who has sighted its first hunter. Leliana knows she could take this girl, mold her into what the Inquisition needs. It would be easy. It might even be enjoyable. As enjoyable, surely, as it was for Marjolaine to shape her. ~~~~

Vera’s eyes are flares in the darkness. Morrigan held a beauty that was to be celebrated. This girl is no different. Vera shifts, lifting her face. How ripe her lips are, how they glisten. Was this a calculation on her part? Morrigan was clever, too. Leliana’s throat is dry. A fire builds in her belly. Fire melts ice. Does it move stone? Does she want it to? Can she risk it? She lowers her face. Closer now. “Find someone to take care of this wound. I have work to do.” The disappointment makes her more striking, the vulnerability the usual indication that it was time to finish the hunt. Leliana releases her. Vera draws back, eyes pinned to Leliana’s before she turns and collects her tome. She’s at the head of the stairs when Leliana calls her name. Vera waits. Leliana eases the raven back into its cage. “Do not dwell on this.” She latches the cage shut and with it, the remaining words on her tongue.

“You can’t ask that.” She draws a breath, taking one step down and looks at her, pale fingers curling along the railing. She lifts her head, turning her gaze away. A proud girl. She takes the steps down.

Leliana listens, counting each footstep until she’s gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Crows? Ravens? Both. Bah.
> 
> I'm sure I'll update this as soon as some idea pops into my head or if there's any interest. The hope is to do random vignettes with these two. Thanks for reading, everyone.


End file.
